GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 Quality assurance and Intellectual Property Rights in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 October 2012 GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 Suggested citation: Mark J Costello, William K Michener, Mark Gahegan, Zhi‐Qiang Zhang, Phil Bourne, Vishwas Chavan (2012). Quality assurance and intellectual property rights in advancing biodiversity data publications ver. 1.0, Copenhagen: Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Pp. 33, ISBN: 87‐92020‐49‐6. Accessible at http://links.gbif.org/qa_ipr_advancing_biodiversity_data_publishing_en_v1. ISBN: 87-92020-49-6 Persistent URI: http://links.gbif.org/ qa_ ipr_ advancing_biodiversity_data _publishing_en_v1 Language: English Copyright © Global Biodiversity Information Facility, 2012 License: This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License Project Partners: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF Document Control: Version Description Date of release Author(s) 0.8 Content January 2012 Mark J Costello, William K Michener, Mark development Gahegan, Zhi‐Qiang Zhang, Phil Bourne, Vishwas Chavan 0.9 Review, edits April 2012 Mark J Costello, William K Michener, Mark Gahegan, Zhi‐Qiang Zhang, Phil Bourne, Vishwas Chavan 1.0 Final version October 26 2012 Mark J Costello, William K Michener, Mark Gahegan, Zhi‐Qiang Zhang, Phil Bourne, Vishwas Chavan i GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 About GBIF GBIF: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility GBIF was established by countries as a global mega-science initiative to address one of the great challenges of the 21st century – harnessing knowledge of the Earth’s biological diversity. GBIF envisions ‘a world in which biodiversity information is freely and universally available for science, society, and a sustainable future’. GBIF’s mission is to be the foremost global resource for biodiversity information, and engender smart solutions for environmental and human well-being (GBIF 2011a). To achieve this mission, GBIF encourages a wide variety of biodiversity data holders, generators and users across the globe to discover and publish (make discoverable) data to global standards through the GBIF network. Website: http://www.gbif.org. ii GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 Table of Contents Contents About GBIF .............................................................................................. ii Executive Summary .................................................................................... v Section 1: Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Section 2: Data Publication .......................................................................... 3 Section 3: Quality Assurance and Control .......................................................... 11 Section 4: Solutions .................................................................................. 18 Conclusions ............................................................................................. 21 Acknowledgements . .................................................................................. 23 References ............................................................................................. 23 Appendix : ............................................................................................ 32 iii GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 List of Figures Figure 1: The number of (a) millions of species distribution records published by GBIF (solid dots), (b) hundreds of datasets (squares), (c) publications that use data from GBIF (triangles), and (d) publications that reference GBIF (hollow circles). Figure 2: The percentage of data provided to GBIF (circles) compared to the amount of species distribution records digitized but not provided to GBIF (squares), and not digitized biodiversity data (triangles) as reported by the GBIF community in 2007 (n = 33 respondents), 2008 (n = 2009) and 2009 (n = 27). List of Boxes Box 1. Glossary of terms used in this paper. List of Tables Table 1. A proposed procedure for the publication of biodiversity datasets with a high standard of quality control, including peer-review. iv GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 Executive Summary An unprecedented amount of biodiversity data is becoming available on the internet. However, significant amounts of data, particularly historic data, are not available online. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility publishes millions more primary biodiversity data records every year, but finds that this is a decreasing proportion of the potentially available data it could publish. Because data sharing agreements and policies alone are insufficient, new approaches are required to accelerate data publication. Only in the past few years have scientists begun calling for data ‘citation’ and referring to data ‘publication’ rather than data ‘sharing’ and ‘availability’. Issues of intellectual property rights (IPR) only complicate data access in the latter contexts. In contrast, the ‘publication’ process has well-established conventions that simplify and clarify IPR issues. Concerns over data quality impede the use of large biodiversity databases by researchers and subsequent benefits to society. Peer-review is the standard mechanism used to distinguish the quality of scientific publications. Here, we argue that the next step in data publication is to include the option of peer-review. Data publication can be similar to the conventional publication of articles in journals that includes online submission, quality checks, peer-review, and editorial decisions. This quality-assurance process will at least assess, and potentially could improve the accuracy of the data, which in turn reduces the need for users to ‘clean’ the data, and thus increases data use while the authors and/or editors get due credit for a peer-reviewed (data) publication. Adoption of international and community-wide standards related to data citation, accessibility, metadata, and quality control would enable easier integration of data across datasets. Metadata, for example, would include relevant information about the datasets that would enable a user to better understand the data and determine its suitability for use for particular purposes. It is recognized that a significant amount of data is already published without peer-review, both through GBIF and other databases, and through various internet and print media. This will continue. However, providing a scale of quality assurance, of which the highest standard is peer-review, will both improve quality assurance and attract the attention of scientists and organizations that place little value on non peer-reviewed publications. Most steps in the process proposed here are already undertaken by GBIF and/or some of their participants. The peer-review process is well-established in the science community, including peer-review of biodiversity data by several journals. Thus the process proposed here is practical and does not pose new technical difficulties. It may be implemented by GBIF in collaboration with its participants and science journals. v GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 Data publications should strive to be of similar merit as other peer-reviewed publications, and thus be recognized by employers, funding agencies and scientists as a meritorious activity. This will require metrics of data use, such as views, downloads and citations. Here, we propose a staged publication process involving editorial and technical quality controls, of which the final (and optional) stage includes peer-review. vi GBIF Discussion Paper: Quality assurance and IPR in advancing biodiversity data publication Version 1.0 Section 1: Introduction In today’s digital world, all biodiversity information and data should be available online, unless there are sound reasons why they be kept confidential (e.g. rare bird nesting site). Information that is not online will be overlooked by most readers. For biodiversity data the requisite storage capacity and infrastructure are available, and there are continuing improvements in indexing and automated tools for data management (e.g. Costello and Vanden Berghe 2006, Guralnick et al. 2007). However, quality assurance is inconsistent and a culture of data publication is lacking. Consequently, relatively few scientists use biodiversity databases for their research, and few scientists contribute data back to the community. While millions of dollars of important, publicly-funded data are ‘lost’, global issues remain such as climate change, over-fishing, infectious diseases, and invasive species, threatening human food sources and ecosystem health. Addressing these challenges requires that existing data be published, properly maintained and openly accessible. Biodiversity data can include inventories of species names and their synonyms, data on species distributions in one or more places and times, images and sounds of the species or their anatomy, ecological interactions, behaviour, descriptions of the dataset, and analyses and interpretations of